"I don't see how my husband can put you on the needy widows' list," said the clergyman's quiet little wife; "your daughter is in service, your son gets work, you take in washing—"
"Please, ma'am, begging pardon for interrupting you," said Bessy, again dropping a curtsey, "the trifle Dan earns would not keep him in bread (and it's little but bread as ever we tastes), and I've not had all this blessed week more than tenpence worth of washing, and—" here Bessy Poole's eyes chanced to meet those of her brother, flashing on her a glance of such fiery indignation, that, quite confused, she stopped short, stammered, and could not finish what she was saying.
Mrs. Curtis naturally turned to see the cause of the cottager's evident embarrassment, and was much struck by the stern countenance of the young man, who stood tightly pressing his lips together, as if to keep in some indignant burst. Finding that he had attracted notice, Ned, who had no wish to expose his sister, and who had difficulty in commanding himself, thought it safest to quit the cottage without uttering a word.
"Is anything the matter with your brother?" asked the lady, after Ned's abrupt departure.
"He has an odd temper, ma'am, very odd; I know that we shall have a good deal to put up with, but, as our good minister told us last Sunday—" and the woman went on with a string of what were meant as pious phrases, but which, being only lip-deep, made far less impression on her visitor than the speaker wished and intended.
"She talk to her son about truth," exclaimed the indignant Ned Franks, as he strode into the back-garden, forgetful, in the storm of his spirit, of the twenty miles which he had walked in the morning. "An acted lie is as bad as a spoken one, and her way of going on was all one wretched piece of acting from beginning to end. If there's one thing I scorn, despise, and detest more than another, it's hypocrisy like that."
Ned struck the nailed heel of his boot violently against one of the weeds, and uprooted it from the ground; perhaps he connected the worthless plant in his mind with the more hateful weed of deceit, or he wanted something on which to vent the angry feelings within him.
"All weeds!" he muttered to himself, "I've a great mind to hoist sail at once and sheer off, and find some other home where all will be open and above board, at least where there will be no hoisting of false colours, or hanging out of false lights, saying one thing and thinking another."
Ned took one or two rapid turns up and down the garden; then gradually slackened his pace as his anger began to cool down.
"Who am I that I should judge another?" thought the frank-hearted seaman. "Are we not all of an evil nature, our souls as full of wickedness as this wretched garden of weeds? There's nothing good grows of itself, it's all God's grace as plants it. Am I—wilful wayward sinner as I have been—am I to throw my own sister overboard, because she has not yet been led to see things as I see them, and to know that the straight course is the shortest course, and the only course that can land us in a safe haven at last? Maybe, with prayer and pains, we'll get the better both of her weeds and mine; I master my impatience and bad temper, she, and that lad of hers, learn that 'a lying tongue is an abomination unto the Lord', * and that all who serve a God of Truth must speak the truth from the heart."